"My tummy is getting bigger and bigger. Soon I'm going to be a grown-up!" (hmm...)

At the doctor's office, to the nurse: you're a doctor!Nurse: no, I'm not a doctor, I'm a nurseE: oh. Well when I grow up I'm going to be a vetNurse: wow, that's greatE: I'm going to be a vet AND a doctor!Nurse: wow!E: yup, I'm gonna have to go to a LOT of school!

"Once I finish my chores you can give me a big clap!"

"Cory, don't lick my boo-boo! It is not a treat!"

To a cashier at the store. The cashier said good-bye and Ella said "Have a nice night! What are you doing this weekend?"

One weekend day during lunch, Ella needed to use the bathroom, so we got up from the table and left the kitchen for a few minutes. Ella's bowl of pasta was still on the table. Cory ended up helping herself to it and Ella was furious. She needed to call Steve immediately to tell on Cory and talked about it all afternoon. That night at dinner I said grace and when I was done Ella said, kind of surprised at me, "Mommy, you didn't tell God about Cory eating my pasta at lunch!"

We were walking Cory in the greenway in our neighborhood and Ella wanted to go in this little wooded part that faces into a creek. We usually go in there but the ground was too muddy and wet so I told her she couldn't walk in there. She said "well I want to, I'm going in there." (unfortunately, this in itself is not notable, I hear this kind of stuff all the time). I said "if you go in there, we'll have to head right back home and you'll go in time out." Ella said: "well - will Cory sit in time out?" I said, "No, why would Cory have to go to time out?" Ella sighed very dramatically and said "Oh Mommy, you're just a stinker!" I have never heard her say that before and it really caught me off-guard, I burst out laughing and said "where did you hear that?" her reply: "Oh Mommy, don't worry about it, it's just a part of life." I really do not know where she comes up with this stuff!

I was going to make dinner in the crock pot before work one morning and had taken it out the night before and put it on the counter. As soon as we got downstairs Ella spotted it and said, “what is that big pot doing on the counter?” I told her I was going to make dinner and let it cook while we were gone for the day. She said very suspiciously, “what are you cookin’ in there?” I told her we were going to have chicken and rice for dinner. E: “I’m not having that. I don’t like chicken. It’s a very yucky vegetable.” Me (sigh…): “Chicken is not a vegetable, and vegetables aren’t yucky. You like chicken and you like rice.” E: “you can just make that for you. I’ll have macaroni for dinner” … While she was eating breakfast at the breakfast counter, I started mixing ingredients in the mixing bowl. She got very frantic and upset, and said “Mommy, I’M supposed to be your helper. I do the mixing!” I went and worked on something else and let her help when she finished eating, and she did a good job with all of it. At the end she said “hmm, maybe I’ll eat some of this when it’s cooked.” Ahh, lucky me!

We were eating dinner and talking about school and I asked her if she had any timeouts that day. She hardly ever does, but when she does, they are always for her either talking to her friends when they’re supposed to be listening, or not picking up her toys and wanting to keep playing when it’s time to move to another activity. She said to me, very seriously, “no, I used to have timeouts, but I am not going to have them anymore.” I said, “oh that is great! Why aren’t you going to have any more?” Her reply (very serious): “Because. I decided to try listening instead. Timeouts are WORSE than listening! Much worse.”

For my lunch one day, I made pasta salad by just throwing a bunch of stuff together with salad dressing and pasta. Ella had to help of course, and once we were done she said: "Is this your greatest pasta salad ever?"

On the way to school on Friday morning, we were talking about the upcoming weekend and how it was going to be fun because we were going to have a leisurely Saturday morning with nowhere to be. Ella said “we can watch cartoons”, I said “and sleep in”, Ella said: “yea, and you won’t keep tellin’ me what time it is!”

Ella asked Mom and Glenn about their last name and they told her it was “Molnar.” She said “like my cat, Nomar? It’s similar.” We were amazed she made the connection between the names and used the word ‘similar’ to describe them.

Erin gave Ella a stress heart that someone gave her as a giveaway at Hollyfest. Ella thought it was very cool and asked me about it, I told her it was a stress ball but then had to follow-up with an explanation of what ‘stress’ is. I said she could squeeze it when she was upset or angry. “You know, like if you get upset, or frustrated ... When you get mad at mommy and daddy you can squeeze the stress heart really tight.” Ella’s reply: “yes, and then I can bring it with me to timeout!”

Belt seat = seat beltLast morning = yesterday morning

Words she uses all the time that surprised me the first few times: frustrated, difficult, ridiculous, indivisible (from the Pledge of Allegiance)

And some extra embarrassing ones:Eating dinner at a restaurant, she yells halfway across the room: "Hey! Are you the worker?" (I promise we do NOT call waitresses 'the workers'!)

We were walking up to the playground and there was a lady gardening in her yard. Ella had to ask her what she was doing and we chatted for a few minutes. The lady said “well have fun”, and I said “thank you, have a good afternoon” and we kept walking. Ella said loudly “why didn’t she say ‘you too’”? I said “well she already gave her closing, she said ‘have fun’” – Ella said “No, she probably just thinks she’s too busy!” (sheesh)

When she has to do her #2 business in a public bathroom, she likes it to be empty. If we go into a bathroom with several stalls and she’ll see there are people in them she’ll say “when are they leaving”, “when will they be done?” – I try to very quietly say something like “Ella, everyone gets to use the bathroom when they need to” and then she’ll say, super loudly: “WHAT did you say?? When will they leave!”

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

I took a shower after I put Ella to bed tonight and when I got out I could hear her still awake and talking in her bed. This isn't unusual at all, it usually takes her a long time to fall asleep. But what was interesting was how steadily she was 'reading' and I listened to her 'read' for about 5 minutes straight, talking the entire time.

Then she sighed, and said "I'm tired now. Let me go to bed. Good night everyone." and then it was silent!

It's like she was just talking a mile a minute, got suddenly exhausted, and had to tell her friends in bed that she was done for the night. She is so silly!!

Monday, November 7, 2011

The night before Halloween I packed up Ella's cupcake costume to send to school for her school trick-or-treat party. The next morning she said "Oh no, I'm going to be a skeleton at school. Cupcake TONIGHT for trick-or-treating in the NEIGHBORHOOD." Soooo, skeleton it was again! We got to school and a few of her friends were already in their costumes so of course Ella wanted to get dressed up immediately.

I had let her bring the mask to school, I figured she'd get a kick out of showing it to her friends, but also thought she'd get sick of it and just wear it for a little bit. When I left she was not wearing it, but one of my friends whose daughter is in the pre-K class emailed me an hour or so later and said Ella had been wearing her mask and told her that she was going to wear it all day - ha!

They had a parade that morning with just the kids, and then the trick-or-treat party with the parents was that afternoon. All day I was watching the clock at work excited to leave early to get to see her for her party at school.

Here she is in front of her cubby

Trick-or-treating to the different classrooms

With Gillian and Rorie

The weather was really bad on Halloween, it rained all day and through the afternoon. We got home early after her party at school, and had planned on going trick-or-treating right away. But since it was raining so hard we decided to go out to dinner instead and wait out the rain a little bit.

Ella finally got to wear her glow bracelets and glow stick necklace that Grandma and Granddad had sent a few weeks ago and was thrilled with them (That is the bag of worms from Noah's Landing in her hand. She ended up sleeping with the bracelets and glow stick on Halloween night, and they were still glowing a little bit on Tuesday morning. She brought them to school for the next 3 days in a row, long past when they stopped glowing!)

After we got home from dinner, it was still raining but we decided we were going to go trick-or-treating no matter what, Halloween only comes around once a year. At long last, Ella finally dressed up in her adorable cupcake costume - hooray!!

Ella had played "trick or treating" several times before Halloween where she would pretend there were people at the door and she would give them candy. So she was really ready when her first official customers came to the door. What happened next was one of the absolute funniest things I have ever seen. I'm sure it will lose it's funniness in writing, but I really don't want to forget this one, so here goes -

She was wearing her red rain boots under her cupcake pants, so as she took her first few steps, her walking wasn't quite normal. The doorbell rang with our first trick-or-treaters, and she was beyond excited. I went to the door and she ran behind me saying 'wait for me, wait for me, I'LL give the candy!!!' I opened the door and there were 3 kids on the porch in their costumes. They all patiently stood there as Ella ran up the hallway and grabbed the heavy bowl of candy herself. The bowl was really just too big for her and she was kind of off-balance from the boots, so I took the bowl from her and told her I'd hold it and she could pass out the candy. She scanned the bowl for the least desirable piece she could find, and grabbed a single tootsie roll.

I don't know if it was all her excitement, or the boots, but she lost her balance - she started flailing her arms around and circled them about 3 times before she fell forward - she managed to stop her fall with her hands on the porch. She stood up, still holding the tootsie roll, and said "I'm OK!" Those poor kids on the porch didn't know what to do - all they wanted were a few pieces of candy and instead they got the Ella Show. At the end of it, she ended up giving each one a single tootsie roll and I had to go back and give them some more pieces of candy out of the bowl.

Oh my gosh, it was just so funny. Between this crazy little cupcake falling over, to her stingy candy-giving from our giant bowl of candy, I just could not stop laughing, it took me about 10 minutes to fully recover.

Here she is with the candy bowl

Our silly cupcake

It stopped raining and Ella was ready to get moving!

Trick-or-treating with Ella was hysterical. She had to interview every person whose house we went to. Here are some of the questions this extremely curious trick-or-treater asked our neighbors:

- Do you have a dog?- Do you have a cat?- What's your cat doing?- What's your Dad's name? or the variation: Do you have a Dad, or no?- Who are the other persons in this house?- Why aren't you wearing any shoes?

One lady closed the door before Ella was ready for the conversation to end and she said "Hey! I didn't get to tell if she had a dog or not!"

Another lady told Ella that she had 3 grown children and Ella wanted to know what THEY were dressing up as for Halloween. She'll keep you on your toes with all her questions, that's for sure!

She's been mesmerized by these jack-o-lanterns and light up decorations for weeks now and finally got her wish to go right up to them and check them out

Getting very sleepy...

It ended up being a later than usual Halloween night because it was after 7 by the time the rain stopped, so it seemed like our whole neighborhood went out between 7 and 8:30 or so. Once we got home Ella's tiredness vanished, and she needed to take inventory of her candy, and test a few pieces :)

It was definitely quite the Halloween, and she is still talking about it!

After Erin, Josh and Cameron headed back to Charlotte on Sunday afternoon, Mom, Glenn, Ella and I went to Noah's Landing. It's a "hands-on" zoo about 45 minutes away, but it's only open on certain days, and they were having a special event for Halloween, so it was the perfect day to check it out.

The volunteers were all dressed up for Halloween and there were decorations everywhere, and the kids got trick-or-treat bags and candy at each of the different exhibits.

I wasn't sure how "hands-on" it was really going to be but it really was!

Feeding a zebra and donkeys

Scary pose with a spooky decoration

Yak

Porcupine

Learning about a baby owl. There were several owls, all rescued, and all were either unable to fly or blind.

A big wolf - the volunteer gave Mom a treat to give to the wolf but he would not get up to eat. He was really sleepy and just laid down, and really didn't even want it from the volunteer. This volunteer also did a wolf-cry and the 'singing dog' in the cage across the way would howl and cry in reply!

Posing with the pumpkins

Petting a snake

Petting a chinchilla with Grammy

Making worms - this was one of her favorite things, and she ended up carrying the bag of worms around for the next several days

Looking at a baby hedgehog

We ran into our buddies Kati and Nicole, we haven't seen them in a few months. Kati and Ella were so happy to see each other and hang out for a few minutes, they are so cute together.

Very bravely holding a lizard. A second after I took this, the lizard started moving and Ella startled and dropped him on the floor!

Checking out the bats with Grampy G

By the end of the afternoon she was a WILD woman, but the trip was definitely a success!!

Sunday, November 6, 2011

The weather on Saturday morning was really bad but by the afternoon had dried out a bit and was cold but dry, so we decided to still go to Hollyfest.

A funny story - before we left, I made Ella a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and carrot sticks for lunch. She said she wasn't hungry for lunch and had a carrot or two but nothing else, and not a bit of her sandwich. I knew that as soon as we got to Hollyfest she'd be asking for a snack or a treat, so I told her that there would be no snacks or sweets until she ate her sandwich, and I took it with me and put it in my purse. Near the entrance, there were two women from a new doctor's clinic handing out goodie bags with candy in them. They tried to give one to Ella and she said, kind of sadly, "Oh, I can't have that. I didn't eat my lunch" and refused the goodie bag. The ladies were nice and gave it to Steve and said "well we'll give it to your daddy for you to have later", which Ella liked. They said a few other things to her and then at the end said "well, if you ever need a doctor's office, we're over on ..." Ella's reply: "Oh, well I ALREADY got my flu shot!"

Erin dressed Cameron up in his other Halloween costume, he was the most adorable little elephant!!

Having fun jumping

On the elephant ride (which I think she seemed kind of bored on this year, she might be getting too big for it!)

Ella wanted to know which activities Cameron would be able to do with her, she didn't like that he was too little to jump or slide but was happy with the idea of going 'on' the firetruck with him.

On a firetruck with Grampy G

Firefighter and little puppy

Ella got to shoot this fire hose and knock down 'fires' in a house with a real fire man